허진 Hurjin

The World of Art as a Descriptive Cyclical System 

By Kim Lee-cheon, Art Critic

A work of art reflects what an artist thinks or intends. The artist’s life and consciousness are naturally disclosed, be it concrete or abstract. We often state that a work of art represents the artist himself. Artist HurJin also seems to be an example of this. That’s why his life looks like “an artistic life” inseparable from his artworks. Although we cannot jump to hasty conclusions, in that his life and art are ongoing, we can judge that his art is associated with his life. The theme of his painting highlighting his daily experience results from his awareness that he should not be indifferent to the devastation of human spirits caused by contemporary civilization. He thus seeks a solution, critically questioning contemporary civilization. This attitude is distinguished from that of an artist who produces works that do not reflect their lives, sticking to superficial aesthetic beauty alone. Life is not always identical with art but art starts from life. In this sense, Hur’s art is meaningful as a candid representation of his life and everyday experience. “The rational tendency putting emphasis on reasonable contemplation of the world and seeking emancipation of human reason and the extreme modernization of civilization has resulted in a culture where there is no humanity. It has recently caused devastation of the human spirit, demolishing our intrinsic traditional values and cultural patterns. I pay more attention to definite concreteness than ambiguous abstraction as a way of solving issues in contemporary culture under these circumstances, producing works in a descriptive manner.” His statement above is a vital clue to figuring out his intent for work. It can be summarized as the expression of concreteness presupposed raisin questions concerning problems in contemporary civilization. It can be said that the theme of his work has an expanded meaning rather than retrospective description. In a sense, this can be understood to underline the content of his work rather than its form. He takes the theme of his work from daily experience and displays his intention, describing the theme with concreteness.

After graduating from college, he seriously considered how to express the content of his work. According to the artist, what he learned at college was mostly methodologies for expressing form or “modeling qualities”, so he needed to explore another method to reinforce the content of his work. He thus explored new ways to complement poor content. He said he underwent a time of spiritual wandering and realized that painting could not be done using only technique. It needed a solid philosophical base. Afterwards, he explored solutions to the poor content of his art, voraciously devouring books on humanities including philosophy and contemplating. His exploration was realized through his attempt to graft the methodologies of the modeling qualities he learned at college onto what he had learned through research and contemplation. That is to say, the scenes he currently presents seem to have accomplished this, and he has solidified his theme of quotidian experience. “Everyday experience,” the theme and content of his work derives from his individual dimension but is grasped and explored from the perspective of history. He represents this theme mainly through a presentation of concrete images. There are many elements we meet in our everyday lives in such concreteness. Ordinary people and quotidian items appear in his painting, like a dramatic journal visualized with form and color. Figures about us such as a peasant carrying a hoe, a politician delivering a speech, and a singer appear like protagonists in a diary and numerous people and things emerge as images depicted in a newly, multifaceted fashion. His work shows that they are not merely quotidian beings but exist as historical entities. As such, his artistic perspective’s multifaceted expansion is evidence to the fact that his work does not depend merely on individual amusement or meaningless creative impulse. His painting consists of several parts of a scene that display beauty, be it abstract or figurative. The aesthetic beauty of Hur’s work derives from completely new images that suggest a mutually contrastive connection between each image and ones in other scenes.He has concretized his theme with many scenes which are composed of large and small images: the main theme is represented with large images while other insignificant sections are depicted with smaller ones.

 The scenes represented in this way show change in the nature of dailiness. The elements used for this include two-dimensionality, frontality, repetitiveness, duality, historical circularity, and modeling decorativeness as well as symbolization, distortion and enumeration. Hur looks for these elements in traditional folk painting, summarizing descriptive formative factors as the following: multiple viewpoints, disregarding perspective, simultaneous involvement of the past, present and future, disregarding bilateral proportion of things, maximization of each thing’s color effect, symmetrical, enumerated compositions, and complanation of things. Hur adopts such modeling elements of folk painting for his own idioms. The way of simultaneously expressing the past, present and future brings about a chronological modeling quality much like an epic. A typical example of such simultaneous expression is found in the juxtaposition of historical figures and surrounding persons and things. His schematized images represent satires that stand for dehumanization, alienation, absurdity, and irony while symbolic images have an expanded net of complex meanings as they have been newly combined with his themes. The net is expanded by the unity of themes. Despite a combination of complex, multifaceted images this net of meanings has the force to obviously disclose the feature of themes. This modeling method is represented by the descriptive style in his painting. His unique descriptive modeling method that depends on situational structures, organic or polysemous unity, and the temporal cyclical system simultaneously inclusive of the past, present and future is rathercreatively intentional. This is found in a prearranged plan for the frames to control the part with the whole. The frames vary in form, ranging from squares, lozenges, and crosses to arrows and other shapes and can be adjusted in accordance with his intentions for the work. He brings various images stemming from his quotidian experiences mentioned above to these frames. Such experiences are represented abstractly or figuratively. Innate in such experiences are the contents for his themes represented in symbolic, metaphorical manners. In terms of material and technique, he has grafted the traditional onto the modern. The materials and techniques he adopts are also used to blend the past with the present as his content relies on a temporal cyclical system. Paper, brush, and ink traditionally used to emphasize spiritual aspects are shifted to the material property with which he could pursue experimental efficiency. In a sense he lends new form to his work with the material quality and technique he has developed, excluding any spiritual aspect traditional material and technique may have. That is rejection of merely implicative, literary painting-like, suggestive traditional modeling methods but has the same roots with traditional painting in terms of material and technique. He has presented a new philosophical view, judging that the philosophy traditional painting has based on is rather far from reality. To represent such a philosophical view, Hur has expressed a large variety of images with colors that play the role of assisting ink in traditional Korean painting by aggressively modifying it. As such, he has presented his distinct descriptive scenes by applying traditional pictorial idioms in a contemporary manner. He lends reality to his themes and uses diverse materials and techniques for such renditions. In particular he imposes organic order on his works to prevent confusion and excursiveness due to the use of diverse materials and techniques. To do this he relies on two methods. One is the unique technique of crumpling and uncrumpling drawing paper, now seeing it as a material with the meaning of yang. If one crumples and uncrumples a piece of paper, the images on it look as though they have been deconstructed with a knife. This can also be applied to figures. The deconstructed images by this method stand for alienation, dehumanization, absurdity and a critical mind in contemporary society. The other method is a technique which involves pouring water on thick paper on the floor and applying paint or ink and covering it with another piece of highly absorbable and crumpled paper. An effect of segmentation is achieved in accordance with how the ink or paint on the thick paper is absorbed by the other. This effect is used to represent quotidian objects, much unlike how one addresses figures on drawing paper. This is also one of his modeling idioms that helps show his intentions. It is well known that he planned and practiced these techniques as a college senior however it was impossible to master them with classes on the theory of modeling qualities alone. As a result he continuously studied and steadily evolved these techniques whilst studying how to solidify the content of his work. As a result he is now able to emphasize complex and unified thematic consciousness with diverse images. Through this work with many images harking back to one new image, he associates his everyday experiences with those of other peoples’, thereby raising common issues and trying to explore solutions to problems in contemporary civilization. As the artist himself points out, his task is to get over the ambiguity that derives from his pursuit of “concreteness,” the treatment of excursiveness caused by complexity, and the uppermost limits of his art. He seems to diagnose and seek the evolution of his work, saying that “In the future the task I have to take on includes shedding inconsistency and achieving ambiguity composed of consistent motifs. I intend to concentrate on seeking unity while embracing complexity based on equivocality.”